Instructions for Authors

HEART VESSELS AND TRANSPLANTATION

Instructions for authors

The Heart Vessels and Transplantation is a double -blind peer-reviewed international journal published in English language on cardiovascular surgery and transplantation, cardiovascular and internal disease and all relevant disciplines. It applies its editorial, publishing and ethics policies in compliance with international standards set by ICMJE, NLM, CSE, WMA, EASE and COPE. Journal accepts following types of articles: experimental (pre-clinical level) and clinical research articles, reviews (invited and unsolicited) with summary and critical analysis of contemporary evidence, clinical case reports shedding light and experience on the management issues of rare and challenging cases, brief reports with announcement of randomized studies and their design, reports with preliminary research results, use and experience with of advanced new technologies in medicine, public health and education projects summary on issues relevant to cardiovascular surgery, cardiology, internal medicine and all relevant disciplines, editorials and letter to the editors with critical appraisal/discussion of the published research articles, case reports and brief reports, and guidelines.

Articles and all required documents (see below), accompanying letter must be submitted to the office through the following emails: editor@hvt-journal.com, office@hvt-journal.com .

Before submission:

Authors are required to submit a letter along with their manuscript stating that manuscript is original work, not under consideration in other journals, is solely being submitted to Heart Vessels and Transplantation journal, optionally highlighting the novel contribution to current evidence of their research work or case report, and optionally suggest 2 reviewers` names independent of your study and institution where the study was performed (though it does not necessarily mean that article will be sent to the suggested reviewers). Authors are required to declare absence of conflict of interest between authors and fill and send the forms explained below with declaration of financial/material support if any received for study (see documents below), authorship form along with article and letter to the editor. Ethical rules must be followed as presented below, either submitting the approval of ethics committee along with the letter to the editor and manuscript, or declaration and explanation in the manuscript.

Declaration of conflict of interests:

Authors are required to declare if any financial or material support was received for study, if there is any conflict of interest – please fill and sign the ICMJE form available in Authors` Corner and return to editorial office – editor@hvt-journal.com and info@hvt-journal.com.

Ethical considerations:

Author should seek the approval of institutional or local, national ethics review boards of the study protocol and the statement on compliance of planning, conducting, presenting human research and procedures used in the study are in accordance with Helsinki declaration as revised 2013 (https://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html) should appear in the methods section of the research articles and brief reports.

For case reports, if any personal patient`s data that identify patients the written permission of patient or parent if a patient is child to publish data and media material should be obtained and mentioned in the article (after conclusion section).

Informed patients` consent on the procedures is required and the statement on that patients/ participants are informed on the procedures and their obtained consent should appear in the methods section of studies involving human participants.

For animal (experimental) studies, it is necessary to indicate that the institutional, national and international standards for care and use of laboratory animals were used (International Association of Veterinary Editors` Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare – 2010: http://www.veteditors.org/consensus-author-guidelines-on-animal-ethics-and-welfare-for-editors).

Authors should be aware that duplicate submission, plagiarism and other forms of ethical misconduct are prohibited, each manuscript is checked for matters of previous or parallel duplicate publications, plagiarism using databases and text similarity using special software.

Peer-review:

Articles submitted to the journal undergo unbiased double-blind (authors`, editors`, reviewers` names or their institutions, cities and countries of origin are not disclosed in articles, all authors, editors, reviewers participating in peer-review process are blinded ) review by editors and external international reviewers (usually 2, but in case of disparate opinions 3rd reviewer is invited) experts on the topic of the manuscripts and authors of published manuscripts in international indexed journals relevant to the topic of the submitted for consideration manuscript. The average duration of article peer-review evaluation by editors is 1 week and by reviewers – 3 weeks. Research articles and brief reports, meta-analyses and systematic reviews undergo evaluation by statistics editor of the journal. After receipt of editors`, external independent reviewers` and statistics editor`s recommendation, Editor-in-Chief makes decision based on the section editors` advice and reviewers’ reports: accept for publication, accept with minor revision, major revision with re-evaluation and reject. In cases of decisions, accept with minor revision or major revision, authors are required to submit the revised according to recommendations of editors and reviewers manuscript, highlighting changes in the articles, list of responses to comments and list of changes and letter to the editor accompanying revised manuscript with 3 weeks of receiving decision letter.

After acceptance of article for publication:

After acceptance of article for publication, authors are required to submit filled and signed the copyright transfer and agreement form to the editorial office of Heart Vessels and Transplantation.

Manuscript preparation:

Manuscripts should be prepared in English language in accordance with ICMJE, CSE rules and follow the rules listed below. Each manuscript should be presented according to the type of the manuscripts listed below. Each manuscript should contain the Conflict of interest and funding/ material support statements (None to declare or describe in detail), Authorship – see specific parts in Authorship form (Authors` corner) – the authors initials, Acknowledgements. These statements should be placed at the end of manuscript body before references section.

Permissions for republication, reproduction must be obtained from copyright owners and sent to the editorial office along with manuscript if authors use in their articles previously published data, tables or figure, schemas, media with proper citation of the published work in the text.

All manuscripts should be typed with 1.5 space and page numbered at the top right corner of the page.

Research manuscripts: Original research manuscripts should be prepared according to the checklists and guidelines for presenting research articles and specific study design (see Authors` corner): randomized controlled studies – CONSORT, observational studies – STROBE, studies on diagnostic accuracy – STARD, experimental animal studies- ARRIVE, meta-analysis – PRISMA (guidelines for other types of study designs can be found at EQUATOR network website), statistical presentation – SAMPL guidelines.

Authors should use proper scientific language in description and discussion of results (Editors of the Heart Group Journals. Statement of matching language to the type of evidence used in describing observational studies vs. randomized trials. Eur Heart J 2013; 34: 20-1).

Clinical trials optionally should be registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov and registration number provided in the manuscript.

Original research articles should not exceed 5000 words and number or references limited to 40. The manuscript should be structured: title, structured abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion and references, tables and figures.

Title of the manuscript should be concise, followed by author(s) names and institution(s), city (ies), country (ies), corresponding author`s name and address (postal mail, email, phone, fax).

Introduction section should include description of the problem, rationale for the research study and hypothesis/ research question.

Methods section should include parts with subheadings with description of the study design, study population, ethical statements (patient/participant informed consent, compliance of the study with Helsinki declaration 2013 and for experimental studies using laboratory animals –standards of laboratory and animal care – see above) study variables and description of specific methods used in line with your research question/ hypothesis, statistical analysis. It is optional to present the assumptions of study power and sample size (See the specific guidelines/checklists for each study design). Statistical analysis should be presented with subheading and include description of software, data presentation and detailed description of statistical methods used to answer your research question/hypothesis.

Results section should include description of results within text, in form of tables and figures. Do not repeat the data presented in tables in the text, if data presented in tables just provide statements/description of results supporting by statistical significance and citing table number.

Discussion section should include brief summary of main original results, followed by discussion of results comparing with existing evidence, highlighting novel contributions or extension of current limited knowledge, explanation of mechanisms, and limitations of the study (with subheading) and conclusion (with subheading).

Conflict of interest statement, Authorship, Acknowledgement – as described above.

For other type of references – book with single author, group of authors, no authors, dissertation, abstracts, conference presentations, electronics resources use NLM style (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7256/).

Do not use conference abstracts that are not indexed in databases in reference list, rather quote in brackets in the text. Every reference must have if available unique identifier number (f.e.PMID for NLM/ PUBMED/PMC) or doi if available.

Tables should be placed at the end of the manuscript, have concise title, subheadings for columns varying according to the type of data presented, descriptive statistics or statistical analyses used for comparisons (descriptive statistics, 2 groups or more than 2 groups), rows for specific categorical (nominal, discrete) or continuous data. Each presented variable (see online article on requirements for statistical data presentation in HVT - http://hvt-journal.com/articles/art15) should be accompanied by unit of measurement (duration of hospitalization, days; ejection fraction, %; number and proportion of women in the study - women, n(%); number/ proportion of patients with advanced NYHA class - NYHA class 3-4, n(%), etc. ). The statistical significance of tests should be presented in column and additional rows for advanced statistical analyses results. For tests of more than 2 groups, present the additional tests values (f.e. F-test for ANOVA in a separate column). Any additional notes regarding data or within/between multiple groups` comparisons for advanced statistical analyses tests can be denoted in the table with letter in alphabetic order with explanation in footnotes.

In the footnote of the table the data presentation type (Mean (SD) or number(proportion)), types of statistical tests used and list of used abbreviations or symbols (we use letters) should be presented. The journal uses the International Systems of Units (SI) standard – please be aware and check the data accordingly.

The tables must be cited in proper order within body of manuscript – results.

Figures must be submitted in jpeg, jpg, tiff, giff, bmp format and should be accompanied by legend and cited in body of manuscript. In the legend of the figure the data presentation type (Mean(SD) or number(proportion)), types of statistical tests used and lists of used abbreviations or symbols (we use letters) should be presented.

The rules for references, tables and figures, required authors` statements at the end of manuscript presented above are valid for all types of articles below.

Reviews: Review articles should not exceed 6000 words and limited by 70 references. Review articles should summarize the current evidence on the topic, provide critical analysis and define the directions for future research. Articles should be structured – title, author(s) names and institution(s), city (ies), country (ies), corresponding author`s name and address (postal mail, email, phone, fax), unstructured abstract for reviews and structured abstract for systematic reviews and meta-analyses; key words, introduction section, methods with description of evidence (literature, published article) collection, statistical analyses in case of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, structured sections with subheadings, limitations and directions for future research, conclusions, authors` statements, references, tables if any, figures if any. The systematic reviews and meta-analyses must be presented according to PRISMA guideline and checklist (see Authors` corner).

Case reports: Case reports must be presented in format of CARE guideline/ checklist (see Authors` Corner) for presentation of clinical case report. The article should contain title, title, author(s) names and institution(s), city (ies), country (ies ), corresponding author`s name and address (postal mail, email, phone, fax), brief unstructured abstract, introduction, case report, discussion and conclusion, authors` statements, references, tables and figures if any. Authors should state receipt of informed consent and permission to use any data/media that identifies patients in the case report.

Editorials: Editorial manuscripts are usually written by invited by editors of the journal independent international experts to comment, critically appraise with emphasizing strength and limitations, contribution to current evidence of the original research work published in the same issue of the journal. Editorial article is limited by 1200 words and 15 references, and presented in following format: title, author(s) names and institution(s), city (ies), country (ies), corresponding author`s name and address (postal mail, email, phone, fax), text of editorial, authors disclosures, references. The discussed original research article should be cited in text and properly include in list of references.

Letters to the editor: Letters to the editor with discussion of published research and case reports articles are published upon receipt from readers and are accompanied by the response of the authors of the discussed article. Letter to the editor should not exceed 1000 words and have no more than 10 references and include title, author(s) names and institution(s), city (ies), country (ies ), corresponding author`s name and address (postal mail, email, phone, fax), body of letter, authors` statements, references. The discussed article should be cited in text and properly include in list of references.

Authors` response to the letters should follow the same above mentioned format.

Images: This type of article should describe the interesting or challenging images (intraoperative, diagnostic – X-ray, echocardiography, radiology, angiography, cardiac catheterization, electrophysiology, of clinical signs in all branches of relevant disciplines) from clinical practice. The number of word should not exceed 500 words, no references, and reasonable number of images to support the full presentation of case. The images are published in color online, for printed version if authors desire to have a color image the additional charges might apply.

Quiz: Quiz must be prepared in format of description of the case and multiple choice questions. Authors are obliged to provide correct answer to quiz question supporting by image or description highlighting the full answer, it must be concise and educational. The number of words is limited by 700, no references. Further information on how to prepare best questions consult the literature – see references.

Innovative or new technologies and patents: This type of article should describe innovative methods developed and patents, with description of innovation, should be supported by images or graphics, and references. The number of words is limited to 1000 words, 10 references and reasonable number of images graphics formula sufficient to describe the innovation.

Interviews: This type of articles should be prepared in form of interview with prominent scientists , physicians and educators describing their substantial contribution and regional and international significance. Article should be in form of questions and answers, should not exceed 1500 words and supported by reasonable number of pictures.

Historical notes: This type of article describe the history of medicine (history of clinical signs, diagnostic methods, or treatment) of interest for readers and should not exceed 1000 words, and supported by no more than 2 images and 10 references.

Please submit article prepared according to the above mentioned rules along with letter to the editor, signed and filled authorship form (it may be scanned for email submission), conflict of interest form to editorial office: editor@hvt-journal.com, office@hvt-journal.com, Togolok Moldo St 3, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, phone: 996-312-881042.

The journal is published online and print version in English language (abstracts and full text). In online version for selected articles, the abstracts can be provided also in Kyrgyz and Russian languages according to the requirements for academic advancement.

Prepared by Gulmira Kudaiberdieva - Editor-in-Chief of the Heart Vessels and Transplantation

References:

1. Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Updated December 2016. Available at: URL: www.icmje.org.Accessed on 9.01.2017